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He then saw a certain blonde-haired woman come up to him. "What's wrong, Joakim?"

He looked up. "Oh, hey, Hannah," he said sadly, looking back down on the steps. "It’s nothing. It's just…" He gave a pause, before heaving a huge sigh and burying his face in his hands. "I'm just really disappointed that Zoey hasn’t been paying much attention to me."

"Well, it'll be okay," said Hannah as she sat down beside him.

“I know,” said Joakim. "It's just that ever since she started going on missions with a few other guys, I haven't had a chance to hang out with her."

"For real?"

"Yeah. She hasn't been like this since she and I joined the team," he said as looked at the steps again.

Hannah looked around awkwardly. She wanted to say something comforting, but couldn't think what. She wasn't quite sure on how she could get Zoey to start talking to Joakim again.

Just then, Hannah felt something large and furry stick its head out of her pocket. When Joakim saw it, he jumped and let out a little yelp. "Wh-what is that?!" he cried.

"Oh, don't worry," said Hannah quickly, reaching into her pocket to take the little creature out. "It's just Daisy."

"What?"

"She's one of the bunnies that I keep in my animal sanctuary," explained Hannah, gently running her hand down the little rabbit's back.

Martyn strummed his guitar, trying to come up for some song lyrics in his head.

After a few seconds of trying to come up with some good lyrics, he realized that his mind was completely blank. Martyn stopped playing and slapped his guitar angrily, dropping his head down to his chest. "Man, I really suck at this," he mumbled. He had been trying to come up with some new lyrics for the last half hour now, but to no avail.

He sighed, dropping his guitar to the floor and rising from the couch. "Maybe I'll go for a walk," he murmured to himself. "My creative juices are tapped out, a little break will help me clear my head..."

Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a place to go without leaving the building. The other members of the team were busy working on some things on the other floors. The best he could do was drag his feet around the first floor. One of the rooms was empty except for Tom, who sat hunched over a table and writing furiously as usual, with about a hundred crumpled paper balls littering the table and floor around him.

Seeing no one else around to talk to and nothing else to do, Martyn slid into the seat across from him. "Hey, Tom.”

"Hey," said the redhead musician, not even looking up from his work.

Martyn looked at the upside-down writing Tom was working on. "Still working on those poems?"

"No way, man. I'm this close to expressing my feelings for Becky. I just gotta find the right words to do it! Hmm..." He muttered something quietly to himself, then looked up. "Do you think 'powerful' rhymes with 'wonderful?'”

"Uh...close enough, I guess?"

"Cool." He went back to writing. After a moment he asked, "How are things with you, by the way? Zoey said something about how you're gonna try your hand at writing a new song.”

“Yeah,” said Martyn, nervously scratching the back of his head. "I'm just having sort of a problem."

"What?"

"Well, apparently, I've been trying to come up with lyrics for the last half hour, but they seem to…well, they’re just not so good."

"Hmm." Martyn noticed Tom did nothing to contradict that opinion.

"I'm trying to write something that’s creative and original, but the lyrics I've been coming up with just turned out cruddier and cruddier."

"Hmm. I'm sorry, man."

"Yeah."

Martyn put his face in his hand and slumped down over the table, as Tom gave a last flourish to his writing and picked up his latest poem, reading it softly under his breath. Suddenly he grimaced, growled and crumpled it up, throwing it to the ground with the others and starting again.

Martyn frowned, then, out of curiosity, bent down and picked one of the paper balls off the floor, uncrumpling it softly and reading it silently to himself. Tom didn't notice as his companion's eyebrows shot up slightly, nor as Martyn bent down and retrieved more of his trash, whispering the words as he read.

"Tom!"

"Gah!" He jumped, dropping his pencil in surprise. "What, man?"

"These poems, they're...they're.."

"I know. Becky might not like them. I think she’ll turn most of those down."

"Amazing, dude!"

Tom blinked. "Huh?"

“Yeah!” said Martyn as he smoothed out several of them and placed them on the table. ”This one...oh, if I just edit one or two lines a little, it could be perfect for that new tune I came up with the other night! And this one—I mean, I won't use Becky's name, but if I replaced it something with the same number of syllables...can I have these, man?"

Tom just stared. "Bu...Becky wouldn't like any of those..."

"I'll pay you twenty bucks."

Tom's eyes shot open. "Deal!"

Martyn whipped out his wallet and shoved a bill into Tom's hand, then bent down and collected an armful of failed poems. "Thanks, dude!" he said, before rushing out of the room.

Tom stared down at his notepad, then held up the twenty with a crafty grin. "Tom Clarke, professional songwriter. AWEsome."